How Do You Spot A Spoof Shopping Site?

Cherrypie7 | 20:19 Wed 11th Jan 2012 | Shopping & Style

6 Answers

How can you tell the difference between a site which looks like the original site, e.g amazon to a fake?
Is there any signs to look out for?

Mail rewards club

Does anyone have personal exp of ELTI heaters

Answers

1 to 6 of 6

Best Answer

No best answer has yet been selected by Cherrypie7. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.

For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.

dasherman

The domain name perhaps.

joko

only use the genuine URL... type it in... never follow a link

stuff like mispellings, bad grammar and lact of punctuation etc can give it away too

Mrsspagnoli57

As well as spellings/grammar be vigilant for 'Americanisms' 'color' 'date formats 01/11/12 (as opposed to 11/01/12), and $ currency on supposedly British/UK sites. Sloppy spelling is the usual give away

starone

I was caught once with a site called Argos Sport. I thought it was a branch of Argos (it wasn't). I ordered a scooter and paid for it by credit card. We never got the scooter but I did get the money made good by the credit card people. My point is, there was no indication at all, it looked like a perfectly credible site.

Buenchico

Running a 'Whois' search on the domain name can often tell you a great deal. For example, here's the result of a search for Amazon.co.uk:
http://webwhois.nic.u....x=0&WHOIS+Submit.y=0
and here's Amazon.com:
http://www.whois.net/whois/amazon.com

Watch out for domain names which have been registered (against the rules) bu 'non-trading individuals', in order to hide their details. Also be wary of URLs registered in Nigeria or (particularly) China.

The only place to check URLs ending in '.uk' is here:
http://www.nic.uk/other/whois/
There are several site for checking .com (and other) URLs but I usually use this one:
http://www.whois.net/

Also check that all of the links on the website actually work, and go to where you'd expect them to.

Remember that UK-based web traders are legally obliged to provide you with a postal address (and not just an email address). If there's an address, try using Google Earth to see whether it exists and, if so, whether it's a shop, a warehouse or a private house. If there's a phone number given, try ringing it.

Chris